Employment and Migration Blog

Tag: Social Media

With the recent termination of Scott McIntyre from SBS due to his inappropriate Tweets on ANZAC Day, it highlights now, more so than ever, that as an employer you should be educating your staff on the appropriate usage of Social Media in order to minimise the likelihood of your employees using it to the detriment of themselves and or the reputation of the company.

The Fair Work Commission recently held that a company’s Facebook message to one of its employees telling her that it would be inappropriate if she was to return to work did in fact amount to the termination of her employment.

In Canberra recently, an interior designer was fired from his day job at a design firm after his employer discovered he was using his LinkedIn page to promote the imminent growth of his personal business to a “full-time design company.” The employee had sent a group email to his connections on LinkedIn, including current clients of the company he worked for, offering his services in a personal capacity.

There was backlash last month from Melbourne firefighters when Fire Brigade management cut all employees right to check Facebook, Twitter, YouTube and other websites down to just 60 minutes per shift. The move came after management found that the top 10 most visited websites were not work related sites. The United Firefighters Union, on behalf of their members, have taken the case to the Fair Work Commission in an attempt to have management’s decision overturned. They assert there are a number of issues with the sudden implementation of new rules, without formal warning or room for discussion with employees. The main concern from the firefighters was that their existing workplace policy provided that limited internet use was "permitted so long as it did not affect [work] or breach internal policies."